The present invention relates to an information recording/reproducing apparatus, for enabling to record information onto a rewritable optical information recording medium, including next-generation DVD, etc., responding to a write command issued from a host (computer), for example, including a recording operation called by “Read Modify Write”, and further it relates to an information recording method to be applied into such the apparatus.
An optical disk, i.e., a disc-like information recording medium, is widely used to be an information recording media of non-contact, a large memory capacity and a low-cost, as well as, enabling high-speed data access, for recording digital audio data and/or digital video data, and further data of a personal computer. Further, in recent years, attention is paid upon so-called, the next-generation DVD, such as, HD-DVD and BD, etc., as being an optical information recording medium enabling recording/reproducing of information at higher density.
However, on such the optical disk of rewritable type, as the next-generation DVD, enabling recording/reproducing of information at high density, for example, representatively, for the purpose of guaranteeing reliability of data recorded, when data is recorded on a recording surface thereof, there is defined a ECC (Error Correction Code) block with an assembly of a predetermined number of sector fields. However, in case when recording the data provided from the host computer, which does not fulfill or satisfy the ECC block mentioned above, onto such the information recording medium, for example, readout is made on the ECC block, including an objective sector field to be an address of recording therein, to be replaced with write data at a predetermined number of bites of the objective sector, and recording is conducted, again, upon the recording medium by a unit of ECC block. Such recording operation, being recorded by a unit sector field, it is called by “Read Modify Write”, in general. And, in such recording method as was mentioned above, for the purpose of guarantee of reliability of data recorded (i.e., recording quality), it is general to conduct the so-called verify process thereon.
By the way, with conducting such verify process as was mentioned above, it is possible to improve the recording quality; however, on the other hand, it takes time for that process, therefore, it is not always preferable, from a viewpoint of recording speed of information (i.e., record transmission speed). Then, for example, in the following Patent Document 1, there is already proposed a method of determining on whether the verify process should be conducted or not, with determining the contents of data to be recorded from structures, classification, attribute information, etc., of the record data, such as, moving pictures and/or still pictures, for example, when recording the data onto the optical disk, thereby executing the recording process. Thus, with this, it is possible to increase the reliability of the record data while suppressing the decrease of record transmission speed of data.
On the other hand, for enabling reproducing the information from such the information recording medium as mentioned above, with high reliability, for example, in the following Patent Document 2, there is already proposed a method of dividing a substitution block into a plural number of sub-blocks when alternating or replacing a defect block (i.e., ECC block N), which includes a defect region therein, by the substitution block (i.e., ECC block M) within a substitution area or region, thereby setting up bitmap information, for discriminating between a substituted sub-block where alternation is made on the data therein and a non-substituted sub-block where no alternation is made on the data is therein, within the defect management information. Thus, even in a case where the defect management is conducted by a unit of the block, it is possible to change or alter the data within a region smaller than the block, and as a result thereof, reproduction of data can be made with high reliability from the information recording medium.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-160060 (2005); and
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-293779 (2005).